WANGST
by KowaretaTsubasa
Summary: [Parody of everything fanfiction] Yukiei is a MarySue who is trying to pass her final semester at the prestigious school called WANGST. She is assigned to the YYH fandom for her final exam. Problem? She is currently the worst student at WANGST.
1. The Manual

Oh yeah, I need to be shot.

Summary: Miss Yukiei Jakou is a Mary-Sue. However, she's no ordinary Mary-Sue. She has just entered her last semester at 'The Women's Academy of Nefarious Gorgeous and Seductive Troublemakers.' She has been assigned to the Yu Yu Hakusho fandom for her final test. This test holds her future as a Mary-Sue. Should she pass, she becomes an authentic Sue. Should she fail, she merely becomes an Original Character. The problem: She is currently the worst student at WANGST.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho, but I can spell its name correctly.

---

At WANGST there are five things to remember.

One: It is all about you. Never them. Only you and occasional appearances from your True Love.

Two: Nothing--and we mean nothing--can get in the way of True Love. Not even death. If a death does occur, then there is your Other True Love or simply necrophilia.

Three: You are sad, depressed, miserable, poignant, heartrending, gloomy, distressing, and every other word provided by the Thesaurus that means 'sad.' You can only cure your sadness by having hot sex with your True Love. Also: True Love protects against all STDs.

Four: You have a past full of angst to rival all angst. This angst does not always make sense and is never truly dealt with maturely. You will experience flash backs and night terrors right before a scene where your True Love will make-out with you.

Five: You are beautiful but never are you vain. Your glorious beauty is never detracted should you have ugly scars or random pimples. Actually, you never have pimples. Every ray of light, gentle breeze, and falling cherry blossom can be utilized to enhance your already wondrous appearance.

---

Yusuke stared at his purple haired visitor as he leaned against the doorjamb which was floating in a hazy realm of yellow and blue-colored fog. "What's your name again?"

"Yukiei Jakou," said the girl solemnly. She was wearing a plaid mini-skirt, knee socks, and a pink and green corset with a yellow smiley face on it. Someone clearly needed to give her some fashion advice; however, Yusuke kept that to himself.

"Right. Does that name have a specific meaning?"

"Well, no," answered Yukiei honestly. "My Sue Name is supposed to be a combination of the people in your universe. Yukiei is a terrible combination of 'Yukina' and 'Hiei.' Jakou comes from 'Jaganshi' and 'Youko.'"

Yusuke stroked his chin and thought carefully, "And you're the relative of who?"

"Hiei and Kurama, actually."

The toushin examined the Sue-in-Training for a moment before inquiring, "How's that?"

The Sue sighed. As if she had explained this many times before, "I am the offspring of Hiei's father and Youko's mother. So I am half-sister to both Hiei and Youko."

"Y'know, that's almost plausible…" mused the teenager.

"I know! Isn't it terrible?" cried out the Sue, eyes beginning to tear up. "How can I be a proper Mary-Sue if things start to make sense?"

Her red fox ears drooped as she continued to wail. (Fire demon plus silver fox demon equals red fox ears. C'mon! Join the Sue Side. You know you want to. We've got healthcare benefits.) Yusuke patted her arm awkwardly.

"Err… it's okay. I'm sure you'll make a very good Sue."

"But I'm not supposed to be a _good_ Sue," whined the purple-haired girl. "I'm supposed to be a _bad_ one. That's why 'Nefarious' and 'Troublemaker' are in the school title."

"Oh," murmured Yusuke who was looking around at the fog. He might be more inclined to be angry if he knew where the hell he was. "Then can I see your school handbook?"

The girl sniffled and started to rummage through her purse. Since the purse possessed some type of Deus Ex Machina ability, endless amounts of everything could be stored within. She pulled out various outfits, random Japanese weapons, basic school supplies, a flute, a fire-breathing dragon, a pink crayon, and finally a large leather-bound book with silver clasps.

"Here," she said as she began to stuff the items back into her purse.

"WANGST," Yusuke read off from the book, "Women's Academy of Nefarious Gorgeous and Seductive Troublemakers."

The Sue sniffed and brushed her brilliant and glittering tears--which, naturally, resembled crystalline jewels--off onto her delicate yet contradictorily robust arm.

"Well," concluded Yusuke, "at least it's better than getting brochures from MPREG. I hear Kurama and Hiei get those like mad."

The Sue scowled and said, "That's because it's the Male Parents Raising Eroticism Goodly club. They can't bother to go around recruiting people when all they do is have parties, babies, and watch soaps with dying cancer patients all day long."

She glanced at her hand, checking to see if her nails were still perfectly manicured and reflected only her utmost beauty, "And besides, they can't even use proper grammar."

Flipping through the handbook, Yusuke stopped when he came to a certain page.

"It says here that you have to sleep with me and at least two other males in this fandom."

Yukiei nodded, "Yes. That is correct."

"You realize that I have Keiko, right?"

"No, no, no!" exclaimed the Sue. "You don't get it. Keiko is your _friend_ and while I'm here, she's supposed to act like a screeching harpy and hit you a lot. Botan too."

"If you're just here to sleep with me and two other guys, and warp a bit of canon while you're at it, why bring Botan into it?"

The Sue stared at him blankly as if he had missed the most obvious fact in the world.

"I think page negative seventy-two should have the answer." When Yusuke failed to find the specific page Yukiei added, "It's near the middle of the book."

"Thou art a goddess in mine eye?" quoted the teenager.

"Two paragraphs down. Read the bullets."

"One: A Nefarious Mary-Sue must always warp canon in any way possible. This includes changing any female, male, androgynous, hermaphroditic, transsexual and otherwise differently-gendered characters' sexual orientation to be completely and obsessively focused on you.

Two: Whenever a female character enters a scene where you are in it (unless they are considerably older), they must either become your rival or submit themselves to a life of worshiping the very ground you walk on.

Three: At every possible moment, sparkle, glitter, and warp the canon around you. Don't worry, it's not like you're fallible."

Yusuke blinked.

"Is it me, or does this book repeat itself a lot?"

Yukiei shrugged, "A lot of the students that go to WANGST aren't very bright."

The teen considered a moment. "So what's the fastest way to get rid of you?"

"Technically we have to pretend to build a relationship with each other. This, I think, should be done using fighting each other as the manual says love/hate relationships are all the rage these days."

"Okay," agreed Yusuke dismally. This was going to turn out horrible, he knew.

The Sue got into a fighting stance. Well, what she considered to be a fighting stance. She had one foot in front of the other, one hand touched to her toes, and the other arced up at a humanly impossible angle.

"What the hell is that?"

"It's called 'Stance of the Nagging Flea.'"

Yusuke observed the stance for a moment before walking over and kicking the Sue in the face.

"Ow!" she exclaimed clutching her nose. "You're not supposed to do that!"

The black-haired teen observed her calmly and asked, "Why not?"

"Read the bloody manual! It says that canon characters are not to mock Sues be it by their hair color, outfit, fighting style, fighting stance, poor common sense, or lack of actual knowledge. Sheesh!"

She quickly pulled a mirror out of her purse and examined her face. When she was sure no permanent damage had been done, she glanced at Yusuke. He was looking through the book.

"Where is--?" he began.

The Sue grimaced the best she could. She couldn't grimace very well as a grimace would most certainly ruin the image of her perfect face. Instead, she managed to 'sulk prettily.'

"It should be in the section where the page numbers turn into imaginary numbers."

Yusuke merely closed the book and tossed it aside.

"You know what? I don't care. Let's just get this done."

The purple-haired girl got up and managed another fighting stance. This time she stretched her hands to the sky, planted her feet together stiffly, and tilted her head at an odd angle.

"What the hell is _that _this time?"

"It's called 'Stance of the Magic Tree.'"

Yusuke kicked her in the chest and she went flying.

"I told you you're not supposed to _do_ that!" she yelled when she recovered. Which, of course, was surprisingly quick.

"Yusuke," inquired a voice somewhere nearby, "who is this?"

Both Sue and canon character glanced over to find Kurama who peered in from the floating doorway.

Yukiei smiled brightly, walked over to the red-haired boy, and clasped his hand.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Kurama. I am Yukiei Jakou, a Mary-Sue in training, and I am currently your half-sister."

Kurama looked at the hand that was touching him like he suddenly realized he contracted the plague.

"I… see," he said after awhile when he recovered himself. He looked concerned.

"Yusuke, may I speak with you… without…" he stared pointedly at the Sue who looked at her nails and pretended not to notice. Yusuke and Kurama walked a small distance away from the Sue and into the yellow and blue fog.

"Have you heard?" Kurama whispered conspiringly. The redhead glanced at Yukiei suspiciously. Paranoid-like, thought Yusuke.

"I'll have heard as soon as you tell me," the younger teen responded.

Kurama smiled absently. He'd forgotten that if Yusuke hadn't heard then he couldn't very well know if he'd heard or not. The redhead rubbed his forehead. It must be the deleterious influence of the young woman standing not so far away.

"I just visited Koenma--"

Kurama was cut off by Yusuke shouting, "You mean he's come out of his OOC-coma!"

After a large infiltration of Mary-Sues, the Spirit World had been in constant chaos trying to keep the amount of the buggers down. They even had to enlist the assistance of some assassins who were already overworked enough as it was. All in all, the population of these creatures only continued to grow, unfalteringly. Koenma had, strangely enough, been the first to fall under their dark clutches. However, instead of allowing himself to be seduced by _their_ alluring and insanely beautiful selves, he committed in-character suicide by injecting himself with a drug called OOC. It was a desperate, blissful escape. No one knew why Koenma would attempt such a horrible thing, but they became quickly aware of the torture the Sues would inflict upon their victims.

"Shhh!" hissed Kurama taking a fleeting look at the Sue. He put a hand on Yusuke's shoulder and leaned closer.

"No one's supposed to know."

Yusuke nodded. He was beginning to understand how urgent this was.

"There's an army of _them_."

The shorter boy had no need to ask who "they" were. Sues, of course. Much like the one that had been talking to him now. However, the Sues that Kurama was talking about were obvious professional Sues and not in-training. An army of _them_… well this could be troublesome.

"How many?" he asked tersely.

"More than we can handle," his friend answered simply enough.

Yusuke thought for a moment.

"What are they doing?"

Kurama let out a long sigh.

"Everything," he said. Then as an afterthought added, "and every_one_. Or at least that is what we think their aim is. Our spy was discovered in _their_ midst when she showed an unusual display of canon knowledge."

Yusuke nodded gravely. This was bad news. Yusuke observed Kurama for a bit and noticed that he looked a little miffed. Which wasn't really as surprising anymore ever since the first Sue had wrapped her arms around him. The shorter teen certainly knew that _he'd_ had problems with Sues. But nothing compared to Kurama. The poor redhead actually had to get an office building and a secretary to deal with all the Sues. It was a long intricate process (Kurama had made the paperwork very complicated on purpose to deter the Sues) that could last years after a Sue first started it. It also helped that the fax machine was also a cleverly disguised paper shredder.

Yusuke looked at the Sue who was amusing herself by writing bad poetry in a notebook.

"I have an idea," he said grimly.

---

Author's Note: Yeah. I have no clue. Feedback is appreciated. Actually, anyone who reads it is appreciated even if you don't review.

Wait. I'm not supposed to say that am I? Since I'm writing a Sue I'm supposed to beg and whore for reviews. Damn! I've screwed up horribly! I'll have to write about my miserable failure in a Live Journal or something!

Oh, c'mon, I'm being facetious. G'day everyone. Feel free to point out mistakes and inconsistan--oh wait. Sue fic. Right.

KowaretaTsubasa


	2. You Have Male

Has anyone noticed that this fic is labeled Parody _and_ Humor? Do I win a all-expense paid trip to the Department of Redundancy, Redundancy Department (of departmental Redundancy)? Because I'd really hate to see a _serious_ parody.

Wait. There's something that I was supposed to say. Oh yeah! I remember now!

Yukiei is _so_ NOT a Mary-Sue!Eleventy-one! You're all just jealous because you wish you were her! And my writing is so obviously superior to all of yours. Nyah!

I think I'm supposed to whore this fic more and mention something about how I so totally should have gotten more reviews and try to guilt trip you guys by saying I'll commit cyber-suicide or cry, but I really don't have the lack of maturity to do that. It's the quality not the quantity of the review that counts.

All of you who reviewed: Thank you very much. I tried to PM you all to give you my thanks, but I don't think FFN was working at the time I wrote them.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho and I can still spell its name correctly.

---

_Becoming Mary-Sue_ is a little-known book written by Sue-Mary who was a woman who sought to become perfect. This hardly matters because no one's ever read it and no one really cares. Her second book, wherein she thought it would be cool and hip to publish her own diary, is just as unread. However, if we were to open the pages of her diary we'd find this:

_Sues are born in a land called Imagination and it is a obscure fact that, because they are so removed from such prominent countries like Creativity and Logic, they have managed to create their own religion: Egotism. _

_A Sue, they say, is constructed by their goddess, whom they've named "The Authoress." At the current time it is unclear whether or not this goddess is an omnipresent being, or simply a whole number of beings all at once. In any case, a Sue is the child of The Authoress and becomes Her love and joy. Each and every Sue is The Authoress's love and joy because they have all been specially crafted for the world. _

_It becomes a Sue's mission in life to achieve the highest form of enlightenment--which is said to be endowed by The Authoress Herself--and become a Self-Insert. A Self-Insert is a Sue who has become one with The Authoress. Sues who have reached the Self-Insertion stage of Egotism are treated with awe, respect, and sometimes--from their enemies--fear. Self-Inserts review--it should be noted here that review should be translated as both "praise" and "worship"--their goddess every day. This is a devotion that is not to be trifled with. Those unfortunate enough to be chosen for conversion either become an Egotist or have the Flames of Wrath wreak havoc upon them. _

_The "review" is also the smallest unit of currency in Imagination. It is unknown if there is a larger unit, but it is speculated that the exchange rate between Imagination and Creativity must be absolutely dreadful. _

_---_

They lay in a bed together, their arms wrapped around each other. Where, it does not matter, but the point is that it involves a bed; and at this very moment they are sleeping. The two consisted of a rather busty thirteen year old girl with wine-colored hair and an awfully tall man whose skin was far darker in contrast with his companion.

It was obvious that the man had suffered more than just The Kiss of a Sue. No one can accurately describe what comes after The Kiss, as no one has much of a mind left after it happens, but there is one thing that is remembered, and it starts with The Lips.

The Lips, if conceivable, are the most powerful weapon a Sue possesses. A single Kiss--which is currently the most horrifying torture a Sue can inflict upon another before going into the truly dirty Art of Love--can make or break a man (or woman). It can instantly crush and control the free will of its victim. Manipulation, mind-control, virginity-theft, and various other crimes can be achieved through this simple but effective weapon.

The girl's cheek nuzzled close to what must have, at some point, been an unwilling canon.

There are several distinct traits to Mary-Sues. One of which is called The Eyes and it is the most terrifying part of this strange, unusual parasite. It can paralyze the native of a fandom with a single glance. Some say that you can look into The Eyes to see the soul and be captivated by it. This is mostly untrue.

Sues do not have souls but instead have something we identify as a Super-Pathos-Conduit. This can sometimes be used as a device between Sues to connect to and speak with each other over long distances. It is also known as the Sue-Net.

When a Sue gets mail, an internal electronic device activates and announces "You have male." Whether it's supposed to be spelled that way doesn't seem to matter as either spelling is likely to prove true.

_ You have male. _

Ionina woke up, groaned, and was already searching through her inbox. Her eyes glazed over as she read the message.

_ Oh-em-gee! There was a spy amongst us! I mean double-U-tee-eff! So we Flamed her. _

The man who lay next to the Sue on the bed mumbled in his sleep as she quickly composed a reply:

_ Oh-em-gee! How miserably vile! Do you know who their employer is! _

Ionina was one of those rare people that could conjure double punctuation and still be taken seriously. The reply was immediate.

_ She said something about the "God of Cannon." I didn't know big guns could become Gods. _

Ionina frowned thoughtfully. She was a Sue who could actually pull off a frown and still have it look incredibly pretty. In short, she was an elite Self-Insert. The best of the best. Conversely, some Canonists would call her the worst of the worst.

She blinked and ran a hair through her flawless wine-colored hair thoughtfully. The busty thirteen-year old then began to apply make-up to her face. In the book _A Practical Guide to Mary-Sues_ it highlights that this action is entirely ritualistic and creating these masks of horror are intended to scare their prey into submission.

_Canon,_ she thought, _no matter. He cannot possibly be strong enough to tear us apart. Especially considering our current strength and The Authoress at our side._

She dressed herself in bright, hopelessly mismatched clothes that looked as though they belonged to a futuristic popstar and left the rather ill-described room. From the bed, Sensui groaned and awoke to what he wished to be the end of his nightmare.

---

After Yusuke and Kurama had finished talking, they somehow managed to sneak up on Yukiei and knock her unconscious. From there they dragged her to Genkai's basement and tied her to a chair with some rope they found in her purse. They could have used regular rope, sure, but they reasoned that if it was her rope, from her world, then she couldn't warp her way out of it. Technically, however, they were wrong. They just didn't know it.

The basement was a nifty place. No one actually knew it existed. It just appeared one day and the canon females decided that it should be the base of their operations. This was because not even the Sues--who were practically living in the temple now--knew about it, or ever happened to discover it. In actuality, it could be a plot hole, and plot holes were things that the canon characters usually considered as dangerous, but they figured that since they didn't have to pay for it, they didn't have to care. They merely shrugged and went about their tasks from the safety of the concealed spot.

"We're going to save our world," Keiko told the Sue, "from people like you."

Yukiei blinked.

"Why?" she asked. "What did we ever do?"

Yukiei was strapped to a chair and she found herself sitting in front of a table with a topographic map of the surrounding area spread upon it. The room was dark and illuminated only by candle light. A strange feeling began to rise in the Sue. She couldn't identify it, but any other person would have been able to tell her what it was.

Nervousness.

Keiko took a deep breath. A shuddering, calming breath. She placed her hands upon the table--gripping it as though she might tear it apart if anyone got her mad enough.

"We're at war," she admitted, "against your kind. We're tired of being used as plot devices."

Keiko watched the Sue with fierce brown eyes. Botan, though she tried to hide it, scowled and began looking over complicated sheets of paper. Genkai merely continued marking things atop the map.

"I'm tired of dragging Yusuke off to Spirit World," said Botan quietly. "Whatever happened to the times when things were explained in person or with video tape? After Yusuke was brought back to life, I've never had to drag him to Spirit World before. Besides that, your auras give off OOC chemicals. I don't even know if I'm me anymore."

Genkai nodded sagely, saying nothing, as Botan continued speaking.

"I'd wake up some day and become utterly depressed. Or I'd simply go around violently whacking everyone I see. I think I may have even dropkicked Kuwabara's kitten once--"

"You what?" exclaimed Keiko. "Botan! You're a horrible person!"

"Well, it's not like I was in my proper state of mind at the time," Botan explained.

The blue-haired girl ceased speaking and turned away, back to her papers. Genkai stood up from her chair, stood _on _her chair, and spoke.

"You take their souls. Small pieces at a time. And then when everything's gone, you return it, but by then another's come to take it. Miss, I've ripped enchantresses apart that were prettier than you and who could actually dress _tastefully_. We're not going to give up our souls or theirs so that you can play your petty romantic games."

"But we don't do that!" argued the purple-haired Sue when she found the words. "It's True Love! _Not_ manipulation!"

The canon females stared at her strangely. The more they stared the more uncomfortable Yukiei felt.

Keiko shook her head sadly.

"But _we_ love them. We love _our_ world. We can't allow you to take it over, so we're going to fight to get it back."

The Sue uttered one word.

"How?"

"We're weak," confessed Keiko, "but still we speak. Still we fight. We falter when we try. But this time, this time, we're going to win. We're going to win, and _you're_ going to help us do it."

"M-me?" stuttered the Sue. Yukiei was suddenly stunned. Completely. No True Sue _ever_ stuttered.

"Oh great Authoress! I've sinned!"

Botan snorted contemptuously. Then brought a hand to her forehead. Hate was like an addictive drug. She wanted to throw all her troubles and blame onto this Sue. Instead, she shook her head and made a mental note to apologize. She was acting out of herself again.

"I think," she said, "that I need some GF-05."

Yukiei blinked. Wasn't that an Internet thing for saying "girlfriend?"

Genkai got off her chair and over to some boxes that had been covered in a blue tarp. Ruffling through them, she pulled out some vials and syringes.

"Great Flaming Authoress!" exclaimed Yukiei. "That's 'Goodfic!'"

The Sue stared, horrified, as Botan drew up some of the liquid from the vials administered herself. Goodfic--"05" meaning that it contained five percent real undiluted Goodfic--had to be the most unspeakable drug known to Sue-kind. They caused plot devices to fail. From rivals to become lovers of the canon a Sue was supposed to get. They caused sanity and sense and… and… the creation of Original Characters and Good Plots!

The Sue began hissing and kicking and struggling against her bonds.

Where? Where? The Original Characters couldn't be here now could they? They couldn't possibly come out into the basement to banish her from her quest of love! Dear Authoress! What if… what if… they made her one of their own? She'd heard of cases where a poor Mary-Sue would meet up with an Original Character, be bitten, and wake up to be one herself the next day. Or even, or even, a single whiff of an Original Character could have a Sue fall into Identification Sickness--where a Sue would have trouble dealing with her existence and would become one of _them_ of her own free will. Yukiei's best friend had been overcome with the Sickness and had ventured off to become one. The purple-haired Sue had wangsted for days and got complimented on her ability by her Angst instructor.

However, the good thing about all this was that sometimes they came through the experience alive and of complete support for the Sue Society.

Oh, but so many fell! So many died!

She was gasping wildly and Botan had been trying to hold her down.

"What is it?" she inquired. "What's wrong?"

And still, the images of Good Plots--those damn horrible monsters--reeled through her head like a sickening slideshow. A movie of nothing but intricate, detailed, well-written plots whirled through her head all full of excellent grammar and punctuation. Uncontrolled, irrational fear lanced through her like a lightening bolt and struck her very heart.

"I-I-I'm afraid of Original Characters. I'm afraid of Good Plot. I'm afraid of Goodfic!"

The Sue began sobbing into Botan's chest, and the ferry girl gave Keiko a bewildered look. Surely Sues did not stutter _or _cry _real_ tears

"I want my manual!" wailed the Sue like some four-year-old child crying for the comfort of a mother.

Keiko went to go retrieve the manual when an odd thought struck her.

_She has nice hair._

The schoolgirl blinked and stopped in her tracks. She turned and looked at the Sue who was sobbing real tears. Her hair was an atrocity. It was one of the most terrible shades of purple she had ever seen in her life. So why…?

Her eyes widened; a bad feeling creept in as she slowly realized what was happening. She glanced wildly at the others to see if they too were affected.

Genkai's eyes seemed to be glazing over. Botan didn't seem to be aware of the danger.

_Such nice hair. Such _wonderful _hair._

Keiko dove towards the GF-05 but by then it was already too late. She and Genkai were already deep in the Sue-in-Training's grasp.

When the first copy of _A Practical Guide to Mary-Sues_ was sent off to the editors, a lot of the unnecessary information had to be cut from it. The writer protested that all information was important and relevant, but the editors told them the book wouldn't sell if it was too tedious to read.

The first passage that the writer had cut read something like this: _A Sue around Goodfic is a perilous thing. Goodfic devours Sues and when Sues know their life is in danger, become stronger than ever before. _

Keiko, who had not read this book, didn't know this, and the knowledge wouldn't have even helped in her predicament either way, however, she did suddenly find herself looking at a very sparkly world.

---

Authors' Note: I actually hadn't expected to finish this chapter so quickly. I surprise myself.

Okay, now to act like a bratty, egotistical author: if I don't get negative zero reviews, I am not going to continue this fic. I repeat, if I do not have _negative zero_ reviews I will not updat--oh wait. That's not even possible. What am I thinking?

Anyway, feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you all who have read this fic and who have liked it thus far. I hope this chapter has not disappointed your expectations.

-KowaretaTsubsa


	3. Stirring Up Revolution

Thank you everyone who reviewed. I can't think of any more annoying clichés in Author's notes, so I'm just going to skip that today. I hope this chapter is as good as the last few have been. It's a little longer than the last two.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

---

In all likelihood, it was one of the most amazing things that had ever happened to him. He was sure nothing like this had happened before. Or at least he was pretty sure. A restless, crackling energy rippled though him as he sat in the sunlight, smiling softly.

Koenma was going on an adventure.

His smile widened.

It was, perhaps, the first time that sentence had ever been written. Or, if it had been written before, years under the terrifying influence of OOC and his many years in rehab, or even the years in a coma had wiped out all the memories of that nature.

The wagon carrying him and many stacks of straw and hay bumbled along the dirt road at a leisurely pace. The surrounding countryside was dotted with small rolling slopes and marshland that swelled beside the winding road he traveled on. A dragonfly zoomed by and landed atop a sleeping woman who lay several stacks of hay away from the teenaged-looking spirit world administrator.

Mukuro's nose twitched, but she did not wake.

She'd recently rescued herself _from_ herself, tossing away the effects of OOC through sheer force of will. Koenma suspected that _They_ had done something to cause her anger to boil and her power to surge.

Koenma found Mukuro when the city exploded.

So did Hiei and Kuwabara.

And now they all sat in the wagon on an adventure.

Which wasn't as an exciting sentence as say… _Koenma_ was on an adventure, but it had a nice ring to it, so he didn't muse too much about it. Though, he couldn't care less as he was just glad to be doing anything that wasn't OOC. Or at least what he thought wasn't OOC. He was having great difficulty telling the difference between what he'd normally act like and what he'd act like under the influence of OOC.

Kuwabara sat across from Koenma. The teen was staring at the clear blue sky and was dressed in a Mexican poncho and sombrero. _They_ don't recognize me if I don't dress like me, he said. Kuwabara was on a quest to find Yukina, who had gone missing months before. He rubbed his nose.

"How soon until we get there?" he grumbled.

Koenma pulled out a map. It was an interesting map, dyed sparkly pink with outrageous colored inks that detailed the surrounding places. Only the dyes constantly shifted as though it couldn't care less about geography. Despite this, Koenma said, "By evening we should reach a Plothole that'll lead us to Logic. From there it'll be a short while until we finally get to Imagination."

Kuwabara mused, "I thought we had to cross Creativity."

Hiei, who was sitting nearest to Mukuro--though sitting near a sleeping demon lord was never a good idea--sneered, "Creativity is a small, _dry_ land. Passing it will take no more than a day. Possibly less."

Hiei's clothes were filthy. Before he'd met up with Kuwabara, Koenma, and Mukuro, he'd taken to digging out foxholes and sleeping in them in order to avoid _Them_. _They_ tended to look for him in trees.

The small demon returned to surveying the landscape and sighed to himself. After long--toxic--exposure to Mary-Sues he'd become bi-polar. Or at least he used to be. He got better. Mostly.

Earlier in the year, he'd angst one minute then jump into the next available person's arms the next. In the end, he escaped his fate by hacking off one of his arms that, for some reason, always seemed to be attached to a Sue. It wasn't the first time he'd cut off his arm and, with the way things were going, it wasn't going to be the last. Eventually his arm grew back, which, at the time, surprised him. He suspected that this was because of the Plothole he'd fallen through.

Meanwhile the arm he had cut off spent its time being passed around from Sue to Sue. Well, passed wasn't always the word for it. It was an arm of Hiei that the Sues were after so there were quite probably some full-scale wars. No one knows for sure. Sues are notoriously bad at documentation of events.

The Plothole led to Kuwabara and they soon set off together on the quest to find Yukina. At the time, Hiei was still trying to purge himself of the OOC behavior the Sues had infected him with. As they spent more time together old social habits, thankfully, found themselves. Kuwabara had been relieved. Dealing with a bi-polar Hiei who had been subject to many Romances--a Sue's version of torture--wasn't one of his favorite things to do. Things got awkward. They didn't like to talk about it.

Kuwabara hadn't existed in a while. It had been an unique experience.

_They_, using gloves and needles, had extracted his DNA--_They'd_ called it Canon Essence--and made a clone of him. Why they made a clone, Kuwabara wouldn't find out 'til later. In any case, after _They_ were done, they shoved him into a closet.

The closet had been big. He'd wandered around it for a year or two. He wasn't sure how long it was. In a closet it was hard to tell.

Eventually he met Yomi and Itsuki who had been playing a card game--Go Fish if he recalled correctly. He watched them play for a while and then joined in. Yomi lost. A lot. But then he disappeared in a puff of blue smoke.

"Well!" Itsuki had exclaimed, indignant. "He exists now!"

Kuwabara hadn't seen how that was offensive, but after a few more years playing cards with Itsuki, he could see why.

Then suddenly, he existed.

Back in his world, Yusuke and Kurama had kidnapped him and demanded that he tell them where the _real_ Kuwabara was. When he'd proven to them that he was in fact the real Kuwabara, they'd exchanged grim glances and sat him down. They told them everything they knew about the current situation.

Kuwabara didn't like it.

Yukina was missing, whole pieces of geography were missing, old enemies were brought back to life, and everyone was acting OOC.

They'd made a plan.

Kurama and Yusuke would battle on the home front, while Kuwabara would find whatever canons that were still fighting and surviving and bring the battle to the enemy. They weren't going down without trying their very hardest. Which was, of course, the noble thing to do.

And so, teamed up with Koenma, Mukuro, and Hiei, they decided to do just that. Waging war was something entirely new to Kuwabara, but he was glad his companions--when they weren't OOC--were on his side.

Koenma started humming.

Then he stopped.

There, on the horizon, were at least a dozen Mary-Sues and three of the various Kuwabara clones.

Hiei tensed. Kuwabara frowned grimly, tugging at his sombrero. Koenma considered hiding under a blanket of hay.

The Sues discovered Hiei on his lookout point on the wagon. The mighty battle cry, "Kawaii!" resounded from hillside to hillside. The demon looked away, covered his ears, and closed his eyes, hoping against all hope that he was suddenly suffering from a hallucination or a night terror. Kuwabara bit his tongue, staring at his "other selves" in their stupid, foolish, anti-Kuwabara behavioral patterns. He clenched a fist.

Koenma looked around for anti-Sue weapons.

The Sues were very close now.

There were no weapons. There was no escape. Koenma was busy preparing a mighty battle speech to tell the others. However, he discovered that he couldn't think of anything. His brain was still far too mussed up from the effects of OOC and its coma.

"Well, I hadn't expected them to discover us on the border," he told them cheerily.

Hiei opened a bleary eye, he looked rather sick. "We're doomed," he said flatly.

"Can't be that bad," Koenma tried to reason.

"By doomed I mean we're finished," explained the demon.

"Surely not."

"How much do you like torture?" inquired Hiei, glaring.

"Very much so, " acknowledged the masochistic Koenma that sporadically appeared as an aftereffect of the OOC.

The landscape was becoming glazed in sparkles. Kuwabara twitched madly. Not existing for a while had prevented him from experiencing any of the Sue attacks first hand before.

"They're almost here," stated the orange-haired boy.

The three men stared as the small faction approaching at an alarming, and disheartening speed. _They_ fought with each other over who was going to get the prize in the wagon. Both Hiei and Koenma fidgeted.

The dragonfly left the sleeping demon lord's head.

Mukuro woke.

"They're _ours!_" screeched a Sue who leapt atop the wagon.

The Sue fell over onto the bottom of the wagon when Mukuro tripped her.

The Sue's name was Karen von Blue of the kingdom Isopreti. She was determined and she was strong. She was an incredibly powerful cat demon. "We have rights, you know!" she huffed, straightening her impossibly designed clothes and glaring at Mukuro.

Mukuro blinked.

Karen von Blue now resembled a very pretty corpse.

Indifferent, the demon lord asked, "What rights?"

_---_

Before Yukiei had grown in strength to give her an amazing power over Keiko and Genkai, the female canons had been wearing military-style uniforms. Now, however, Keiko wore an intense amount of black clothes, make-up, and hair accessories. Genkai remained more or less the same but with a noted difference about her attitude towards members of the opposite sex.

Botan remained the same. She'd had GF-05 moments before and Yukiei's power surge hadn't affected her. She was, however, tied to the very chair that the Sue had been tied to earlier. She sighed as she watched Keiko, Genkai, and Yukiei have a tea party over the table where the topographic map was spread. Keiko was a little too giddy around the bread knife.

Genkai buttered her English muffin.

"Like, oh my _gawd_, Yukiei, where did you get this tea? It's, like, so good."

Botan retched.

Yukiei smiled--she was no longer crying now that she was in control; sparkles radiated from her face and assaulted the eyes of the viewer. Keiko ANGSTed. Someone passed her a tart. Keiko continued to ANGST. Yukiei smiled again. Genkai continued to talk. And Keiko was on her way to becoming a hardcore ANGSTer.

Botan watched as Kurama and Yusuke peered from behind the basement's door, probably trying to find a solution to their predicament.

"Well this was unexpected," Kurama told Yusuke matter-of-factly. Yusuke nodded and scowled.

"We need her though," continued the redhead. "We need one of _Them_ on our side."

Yusuke nodded again and said, "We need something to make her obey us or at least something that'll make her not focus on what she came here to do."

"We can't de-Sue her."

"Yeah, I know."

They stared at each other.

"I have an idea," Kurama mumbled slowly.

Yusuke shook his head and held up a hand, "No way. _Anything_ but _that_."

"It's the only thing that works."

The shorter teenager grimaced, "Fine."

A few short minutes later, Yukiei watched as the basement door swung slowly open, creaking ominously as it did so. Meekly, Yusuke and Kurama shuffled into the room, their hands behind their backs. Yukiei smiled carelessly and sent her power over to control them. Curiously, it bounced back uselessly.

The boys shared a glance towards each other and blushed.

"Here goes," said Yusuke.

Yukiei stared. In one fluid motion, the teens stripped off their shirts and revealed whatever it was they were hiding behind their backs. Yukiei continued to stare. Rainbow-colored sticks with slots and knobs on them rested firmly in the boys' hands.

Yukiei hissed. They wouldn't!

The sticks they held were called Slash-Sticks, an ancient weapon used long ago. If you couldn't tell by the name, Slash-Sticks were sticks made for Slashing.

When it was first introduced, Slashing was a much frowned upon form of art performed by either two men or two women. It gets its name from the ancient group of wizards who were called "The Slashers" and who reconstructed the original Slash art form into a magic ritual. Because of this, "Slash Wizards" was a word that become interchangeable with "Slashers." The Slashers maintained the belief that the _coalescing energies _of the same sex called forth truth to this world and those energies could very well save or damn us all. They did, however, give no explanation for why the word 'love' was printed in bold black letters along the side of the stick.

For years Slasher culture entertained people in their homes, on the streets, and in the kitchen. Even small children asked their parents if they could watch the magical Slash Ritual the next time the enigmatic Slash Wizards came by.

But the world would soon learn that Slash was not a toy. It was a weapon.

In the first Fanon War, the Slash Wizards and the Mary-Sues fought one of the bloodiest religious wars in history. Imagination was like a nuclear wasteland, Creativity was raped and plundered, and Logic was…

…left relatively alone.

At the end of the final battle, the victor was unclear. Many Sues had been converted, and many of the Wizards' Slash-Sticks had been broken in two.

It is said that the Mary-Sues won the first war. Their population was larger and increased exponentially every day. But the Slashers were strong and resilient. They wouldn't give up so easily.

In the second war of Fanon, the Slashers won. There are some things one needs to know in order to understand why this was so. The first is that the Slashers had powerful gods. When fighting religious wars, it helps to have strong gods. The second that needs to be understood is the mechanics of the Slash Ritual itself.

The Ritual consists of smacking the two rainbow-colored sticks together, and, guided by the hands of the Slasher's most powerful god, Phan-Gurl-Phan-Tah-See, the sticks slide into the other's slot. This expels the unbalanced magics and other compelling forces in the area, or even dissolves them. The sheer amount of energy required to perform such a ritual often left the casters hot and sweaty.

When Yusuke and Kurama finished, Botan had been untied, Keiko was busy changing clothes, and Genkai was disgusted with herself.

Yukiei knelt on the floor, horrified. Because the ritual stripped imbalances, she was almost completely powerless.

"You can't go around forcing us to do whatever you want," Yusuke warned the Sue, tossing his Slash-Stick to Kurama. "We _need_ your help, but if you keep doing this, we'll Slash the hell out of you."

"Help yourself!" snapped the Sue, crying again. Thank the Authoress she was still alive after such a terrifying display like that. Having all her power drain away left her faint and weak.

"We've tried," Yusuke stated curtly, "but we need a Sue to beat a Sue."

Yukiei whimpered, "But it's not supposed to be like this. I'm only supposed to sleep with you and--" the Sue caught Keiko's glare and amended, "--I mean a couple of guys. That's all. Soon as I do that I'll pass my test and I can leave. Won't that be better for you?"

"No," said Keiko. "This has gone on for long enough. It's time for it to end. I'm sorry we're impeding your plans, but we just can't allow this to go on anymore."

Yukiei watched Keiko, startled.

They talked of Sueing as if it were some type of torture--but that couldn't be true could it? Sues brought love and happiness wherever they went. They healed the scars of the past and brightened the future. They romanced loners who'd never known love, they dispelled the ills of a person's character, and they destroyed the perverts of the world.

"Sometimes" said Genkai, as if reading her thoughts, "even the best concepts can go awry."

Tears continued to run down Yukiei's face as she took the hand Yusuke offered to her and rose to her feet.

"But… but we're never Wrong."

"Perhaps," murmured Kurama, pulling his shirt on over his head, "but maybe it's time to be."

"No, I mean it," Yukiei said, wiping her tears. "We've never been Wrong."

Keiko stared at Yusuke for a bit. "Put your shirt back on," she whispered.

"What do you mean by 'Wrong?'"

"It's one of the pillars of Sue society. A Sue cannot be Wrong. If she is ever Wrong, then she is not Right. If she's not Right, then she's an--" here Yukiei's lip trembled, "OC."

Yusuke put his shirt on. "What's the difference?" he asked.

The purple-haired girl smoothed out nonexistent wrinkles in her clothes. "If you ever met one you'd know. They're evil."

Keiko started cleaning up the table where the interrupted tea party had taken place. She straightened out the topographic map.

"It doesn't matter anyway," she informed them. "We cannot continue to rely on Kuwabara to take the battle to _Their_ home front. How will we know how the battle's going? Has he met anyone who isn't bogged down by _Them_ or infected with OOC? What if he fails and we don't know it. There's too many things that can go wrong."

"She's right," commented Genkai. "We need to fight back. We need to fight back here and _now_."

The canons all looked at Yukiei.

"We need you to fight against the other Sues," Kurama divulged.

"That's blasphemy!"

Yusuke shook his fist at her, "You do it or we get the Slash-Sticks out again."

Yukiei shuddered.

Throughout this whole exchange, Botan had been rather silent. Only when she spoke up did people remember she was there.

"If you defeat the Sues here… become their leader or something… and go infect a _different _fandom--wouldn't that make you an official Sue?"

The Sue considered the idea. It wouldn't have been the first time something like this had happened. Naturally, no Sue ever trusted another Sue; that was why the society had been set up the way it had. With every male belonging to them, no one could say that another Sue was taking her property. Everything an individual Sue owned, all Sues owned. A Sue started out in one fandom, and moved onto another, then onto another. Like a plague. Still, all this thinking was beginning to make the Sue uncomfortable. Canons were not supposed to be managing her future. That was… blasphemy.

But would it work?

Botan tried again, "A Sue is… supposed to be perfect, right? So… wouldn't it make sense--I mean--nonsense for the _most perfect_ Sue to rule the Sues?"

Kurama raised an eyebrow. Botan was trying to prey on the inherent flaws and hypocrisies in Sueology in order to convince the Sue to still be a Sue but to focus her energies elsewhere. Clever.

"Yeah," said Yusuke, catching on. "Couldn't you just kick out whoever's in charge and make up the rules yourself?"

"That's blasphemy!"

"But surely the most perfect Sue--a _true_ Sue--should be the ruling Sue?" inquired Kurama. "And aren't all Sues perfect?"

"But that's--"

"You're a Sue," Keiko contested flatly, "you're perfect aren't you? And if you're perfect, then you must be a true Sue, then surely that makes you eligible for ruling the Suedom."

Yukiei suddenly remembered something her grandmother--who looked not a day over fourteen--told her.

"_Sueing requires very little thought. Or so much thought that it goes in circles."_

Yukiei grinned a grin that was most certainly not Sue-ish in any way.

---

Author's note: Tons of thanks go out to my beta-reader. Without him this fic would be abusing semicolons and lists all over the place. Probably some other forms of punctuation as well. Yay for the anti-punctuation abuse squad!

KowaretaTsubasa


	4. Everyone Loves Crack

**WANGST**

Chapter four

By: Kowareta

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

---

An excerpt from _A Practical Guide to Mary-Sues_ reads:

_Mary-Sues have a very difficult government--it's a theocracy. This means that those closest to The Authoress are the ones in power. As we've already discussed in previous chapters, you'll remember that Sues touched by The Authoress are called Self-Inserts. The land Imagination (for details see chapter sixty-two: Homeland) is managed by the strongest of the Self-Inserts. Since it was a theocracy managed by a group, they liked to think themselves clever and call their form of government "theooligarchy." Whenever the head Self-Inserts had meetings, they always remembered to bring along Greek or Italian salads. "To get in the spirit of things," they said. _

_The author of this book assumes this reasoning comes from the delusional idea of theirs that 'oligarchy' sounds like some form of salad dressing. _

_A rung below the top of the hierarchy ladder are the Warp Sues. These Sues are the shock troops of the military in the fact they are the first to breach the newborn lands of a fandom. There they taint and corrupt and (hence the name) warp the canon around them. They are the first to pillage the pretty boys and generally hit the unconquered lands of canon with the force of an atomic bomb. _

_Just under the Warp Sues are the Classic Sues. These Sues make up the basic structure of the priestess-hood which serves The Authoress. They are the main framework in Sue society and have way too many nuances and social structures to count. Essentially, this includes the Angst Sue, the Omnipotent Sue, the Seduction Sue, the Innocence Sue, the Rebel Sue, the Suicidal Sue, the Magic Sue, the Thief Sue, the Hybrid Sue, the Schoolgirl Sue, and many more. There are restaurants in Imagination called McSue and the children's toys are a collectable set of dolls that represent each of these stations. The catchphrase used in McSue commercials is "Seduce them all!" Naturally, each Sue-Child is eager and willing to do so--literally or just by pushing reviews across the counter to the smiling employee. _

_Below the Classic Sues are the Borderline Sues. Because Borderline Sues are essentially half-Sue, half-OC, their presence amongst both Canon and Imagination becomes something to be feared. In the military, and because their Mary-Sueness and OCness is hard to pinpoint exactly, they are employed as spies to help infiltrate a particularly well-guarded fandom. It is not uncommon that they would use chemical warfare to tip the tides in their favor. The chemical most commonly used is OOC. _

_Sometimes, however, Borderline Sues are subjected to extreme prejudice because of their heritage. Sues hate the legendary creature known as the OC, so sometimes they are banished from Imagination. This is something like a rite of passage. Either they become Sues out in the wilds of Canon, or they become the dreaded OC--cursed to live in the shadows. But not the well-known, dry, and comfy shadows that Angst Sues are regularly found in. However, Borderline Sues hardly live long on account of rather paroxysmal genes… like a nuclear fission reaction really, or spontaneous combustion. It is theorized that The Authoress created such an abomination for this reason. _

---

Sensui sighed. A cloud of angst hung over him--_and it wouldn't go away_. He scowled as the fuzzy gray cloud continued to trickle water on him and dampen the mountain of bed sheets. Earlier that day, when Ionina had come back, she gave it to him as a present. At the time, and because of certain toxic chemicals given off by the Sue, he accepted it delightfully and even kissed the monster. Now he grumpily lay on the bed, cursing her very existence. He glared at the angst-cloud.

Ionina was a Self-Insert Angst Sue, which meant that she was one of the most important people in the land of Imagination. Her particular profession was Super Goth. It's a little known fact that back in the good 'ole Roman times Super Goths were a covert group that liked to wear black and sit around and brood. Now this seems like the ordinary modern-day teenybopper Goth, but in reality these Goths revolutionized the whole period by _creating Angst._

It's also an obscure fact that Angst, with a capital 'A' is a weapon. Its original purpose was to disable any able-bodied member of the Slash Wizards and canon natives so they could pillage, rape, and conquer fandoms without all the added dangers of, oh, having an opponent who could actually fight back. However, the Angst Weapon backfired and affected the Goths forever and all their descendants. Now they must constantly assert that their mindset and wardrobe are constantly under scrutiny of an oppressive society.

The angst-cloud stared back at Sensui.

_Zhhht!_

Lightning. Sensui's hair stood on end, and he was lucky that certain unexplainable circumstances where water suddenly didn't conduct electricity anymore took place. He grunted and returned to what it was he had been doing, which consisted of chewing himself out of black leather bondage straps.

He--well, most of him--was irritated, and he--Naru too--wanted to find Itsuki.

Ionina was busy deciding between a Gothic Lolita dress and an ancient Victorian dress in the next room. She was shooting off rapid-fire messages over the Sue-Instant-Message-System (SIMS).

_They're near Logic? _Her face contorted into a twisted expression as she sent the message. _Then that must mean…_

_Yes, _came the frantic reply, _they've got it; I don't know how, but they've got it. _

_Impossible!_ screeched Ionina. She'd decided on the Gothic Lolita dress. _We pillaged it long ago. It hasn't been seen in ages. _

There was silence over the SIMS as Ionina clasped the top of her bodice together. Billows of dark fabric and white lace flowed about her feet, and half her bosom popped out of the bodice because it was a size too small. However, there is no such thing as a size too small for a Sue and clearly this is an example of creative clothing otherwise known as body highlighting. Everyone knows that if you wear your clothing for the purposes of highlighting certain body parts, no matter how small the size, suffocation or cutting off circulation is always bearable if you look pretty or if you somehow radiate the word 'sexy.' Points go to those who are able to look both pretty and sexy while suffocating _and_ passing out from poor blood circulation at the same time.

The real pros are dead _and_ sexy.

Ionina took a step towards her bedroom and turned the doorknob. The Self-Insert blinked. She was sure she could hear scuffling from behind the door. What was her dearest Sensui doing?

The SIMS beeped: _Oh-em-gee! Oh-em-gee! Noooooo! _

The scuffling was louder now. She heard the rattling of glass. She was just about to open the door when the SIMS beeped again:

_It'scanonit'scanonomigodnoooo!_

The Sue frowned. That confirmed it then. The Canon God was back. Turning her back on the door, she strode forward and grasped a lance that had been sitting conveniently in the kitchen. Why she'd been trying on dresses in her kitchen was anyone's guess, but Self-Insert Sues were especially notorious for their perplexing behavior. She stared into the mirror that sat atop the kitchen table and smiled. Not a hair was out of place.

She quickly applied her lipstick again (it had been lost on someone else's lips) and glanced over her shoulder at the door to her and Sensui's room. She'd see what all that noise was about later.

She clutched a hand to her chest, a moment of mourning for her lost comrades in the battle against Canon, and then swung the door open and hurled her lance outside.

A small Canon-worshipper had been slain.

Meanwhile, Sensui was busy trying to squeeze through his window.

"Look, just wriggle your hips a bit. Worst case scenario you get a few scratches or you damage the window frame. And personally, I'm all for the bodily harm part."

Sensui gripped his rescuer's hands tightly, stared into her blue-green eyes, and commanded, "Pull."

The woman planted her feet firmly on the siding of the house, gritted her teeth, and tugged.

"I don't think this is going to work," Koto told Sensui, her tail flailing madly.

"Stop," he replied. She did.

Sensui watched her for a minute, his highly intelligent mind sketching out new plans and immediately crushing them up into a mental wad of useless paper. Then he threw it across the spaces of his mind to hit a small piece of drywall positioned perfectly to drop the wad into a stainless steel and entirely imagined wastepaper basket. Koto's ears twitched. Sensui sighed and rubbed his forehead. Halfway in and out of a window didn't help the mental process. He mused for a moment longer.

"Crack," he said finally.

"What?" asked Koto, alarmed.

Sensui leaned his head to the side as if he were listening to someone who wasn't there.

"Canon Reality Aneurism," he explained.

"And the C-K part stands for?"

Sensui shrugged the best a person could while being halfway out the side of a house in the middle of nowhere; Sues always inhabit the middle of nowhere, it's just what they do. And there's never any actual scenery. It's like they just suck out all the description of any given area.

"_They_ couldn't think of anything remotely clever for C and K, so They just left it there."

"Ah. So how do we start this aneurism, and how will it get you out of the window?"

"Crack is short for 'Crack Pairing.' Crack Pairings are a sort of anti-reality created by canon itself. The anti-reality manifested through canon is entirely different than the kind created by--"

"Okay, okay!" interrupted the announcer. "I get it. How do we start this?"

"Kiss me."

"Er…" said Koto.

"Hesitate any longer and I'm bringing out Kazuya."

Naturally, Koto had no idea who or what Kazuya was. However, she had met many a man who'd given pet names to many strange things and body parts--none of them amusing. In fact, she had a rule about men with pet names for things they owned. That rule being: Avoid Like Plague.

Staring at the expression on Sensui's face, she decided to skip this rule, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

The impact hit them like a meteorite.

Free of the window, Sensui smiled and clasped Koto's hands. Koto, too, smiled and stepped closer to the tall man.

Little crack particles rained down upon them creating little crack snowdrifts.

Koto and Sensui started dancing and made their way away from the house.

The angst-cloud was not amused. It gathered itself with as much dignity as it could and followed behind, spitting lighting at small furry creatures when it could.

Never agitate a cloud of angst, it'll only grow bigger and more dangerous.

It exists to consume.

---

Koenma reflected: It had been a convenience akin to cliché, the way the boards of the wagon they had been riding on being made entirely out of Clue-by-Fours. Mukuro had ripped a board from their vehicle and whacked a Sue over the head with it. The parasite had screamed and fell to the ground, huddling in a sparkling heap.

Mary-Sues avoid logic like proper grammar avoids badfic. Logic is one of the only natural defenses against Mary-Sues. Hitting a Sue with a Clue-by-Four is like injecting a few units of pure, undiluted goodfic into them. Clue-by-Fours are part clue, part logic, and part wooden board. Hitting the Sue on the head with one makes them realize they're not perfect. A hit to the head for anyone else is like getting hit on the head with a bit of wood.

Getting A Clue while so close to the land of Logic allowed the Sue to reflect upon the realization she is not perfect.

They also then realized that exploding in a puff of illogic was pretty silly and damn near impossible. And without the Sues to orchestrate the Kuwabara Clones, the copies disappeared. Illogically, of course, but with style.

The Sues remaining (the other twelve being dispatched by Mukuro and Koenma who got a little too happy with the Clue-by-Four) were now in Identity Crisis.

"Why am I wearing a neon green dress? And why does my hair stick up like this?"

The canon characters had left them there and continued on their way to Logic. It had been a hard journey. It was full of walking. But Koenma strove bravely on. For he was on an adventure and he led the others with great and powerful leadership abilities and--

Kuwabara snored.

--That is, immensely great and powerful leadership abilities and a intense charismatic--

Kuwabara rolled over and sighed.

--_Intense_ charismatic qualities and decisive decision-making--

Kuwabara mumbled in his sleep.

Koenma sighed. Defeated. He'd barely led. They just followed the sign that said "To Logic: This Way" and walked half a mile to a plot hole which distributed them to the capital of Logic, El. They then appealed to the city for help against the Mary-Sues. There wasn't a lot of people to help though. Not a lot of people lived here.

Kuwabara scratched his stomach in his sleep.

Koenma sighed again.

There was the sound of boots on wood. The wood was probably made of Clue-by-Fours. They were in the land of Logic after all.

Hiei crouched on the windowsill.

"What did they say?" asked the Spirit World administrator.

"They say it's a damn near impossible task."

The brown-haired man nodded sagely.

"And then what?"

"And then," Mukuro said from the doorway, "I told them it might be damn near hard to fix the capital if everyone in it were dead."

"S' true fact," consented Koenma. If diplomacy didn't get you what you wanted without argument, there was always the option of using brute force. And Mukuro seemed like a good candidate for those tricky negotiations with people who had trouble deciding between helping them and daily life. In fact, she could remove the daily life part with hardly any trouble at all.

Kuwabara woke up and everyone's attention shifted to him.

He blinked.

"Okay, I just woke up. I _know_ I haven't done nothing to warrant anyone's attention or criticism."

"Except for mine," said Hiei. "_Everyone's_ subject to my criticism. Solicited or not."

Mukuro walked into the room.

"We need a plan," she said.

Kuwabara raised his hand.

"I have one."

They stared.

He told them what it was.

Hiei stared. Mukuro blinked. Koenma was shocked.

They all agreed. It _was_ a good plan.

---


	5. Wishes Enough

**WANGST**

Chapter five

By: Kowareta

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

---

Youko Kurama—and it's best not to ask why he's separate from his host body Shuuichi Minamino as the fandom simply doesn't care anymore—was incognito. For an infamous bandit, this was probably nothing new. However, it is important to note that the girl next to him, who usually calls herself Yukina unless otherwise misspelled, was incognito too. She was dressed in jeans, a red tank top, a leather jacket, and a choker. She didn't know why she was dressed this way, but Youko Kurama had told her to wear it, and she was sure there had to be a pretty good reason.

They passed by a Mary-Sue.

"Youko Kurama?" she asked looking at the silver-haired demon who was wearing a snazzy three-piece suit and stylish sunglasses.

"Excuse me?" asked Youko Kurama, turning his attention to the Sue and raising his eyebrows expectantly.

"A-Aren't you Youko Kurama?" she asked again, this time a little unsure. Her heavily bejeweled hand was pointing at his chest.

Reason dictates this: If it is un-canonical to act un-canonical, then canon must act canonical because otherwise it is not canon.

Youko Kurama is the kind of guy who loves to exploit these kind of fallacies and flaunt the fact he's never worn a three-piece suit before but looked good in it nonetheless.

He is also an extremely experienced liar. He could lie his way through a truth-telling contest and win. History proves this because he's done it twice.

"I'm sorry," he said apologetically, grabbing the Sue's hands gently. "No. You are mistaken. I am Not Youko Kurama." To demonstrate, he pointed to the sign that hung around his neck which stated: _I am Not Youko Kurama._

"Ah," said the Sue. "Sorry."

"No need," said Not Youko Kurama. "You're not the first to have been mistaken."

The Sue made additional apologies and then hurried off.

The fox thief shrugged and pocketed his eight shiny new rings.

The incognito canon characters were walking down the side streets of the city Bapar: the land of Bad Parody. It used to be called BadParod until a man by the name of Parod became offended and waged war for a few short years. It wasn't a very bloody battle but left most parties feeling unappreciated because, for the most part, nobody noticed the so-called "war." Nobody knew exactly where Bapar was or who lived there. They also didn't care.

. No one knew why they had to go and make a big deal about such an unremarkable genre like parody either.

Bapar is a city filled with fog and buildings that could think. It is a place _defined_ by the way people think—which, most times, is shoddy at best. What's worse is that most of it had been built by parodists, who are quite possibly the shoddiest thinkers in the available universe.

Youko Kurama's eyes flickered over towards the mouth of an alleyway which seemed to dwindle smaller and smaller as he watched it. The canon characters ducked under a window and into a shadow. A few minutes later the window opened fractionally.

A pale hand lowered a large leather briefcase.

"I know I don't need to tell _you_ how careful you need to be with this. Any outside exposure and it will decompose."

"The goods… they're entirely pure?" inquired the silver-haired demon gently taking the briefcase.

"Do you doubt me?"

There was a rustling from behind the window. The hand lowered a ratty-looking backpack next.

"For the girl," said the voice.

The infamous thief narrowed his eyes.

"We didn't agree on a double--"

"True enough, but it is not what you think. You will need it," insisted the voice.

The fox thief took the bag and handed it to Yukina. He was silent for a moment before he said: "Yomi, you do good work." The dark-haired demon merely nodded, then closed the window.

Yomi now wore glasses. He was blind, but the glasses helped stall the effects of badfic if only because Yomi found there's always a loophole if he searched hard enough.

The two smugglers took off down the street making sure to move very cautiously so as to avoid rattling their contraband.

The buildings around them shifted uneasily. They were constructed with the hate of bad literature whose infrastructure _was_ bad literature. They were created with a love of some kind found only in the minds of shoddy parodists—if any proof of such a mind existed at all. Bapar was a frustrated sprawling city that rather clung to land as if time might knock it out of place.

There are rumors though. The buildings can think. The city eats people.

No silver-haired demon nor ice apparition and their respective containers had ever before been subject to so much architectural scrutiny. Blinds and curtains crinkled curiously, shutters blinked incredulously, and doors gawked like open mouths.

The buildings can think. And right now they're thinking: _Oh shit._

Somewhere a coffee shop ate a Sue.

---

When one thought of Yusuke, one did not think immediately of rabbit ears. Also they did not think of large frilly dresses, either. This would have to change.

"Are you sure this will work?" he asked.

"Shh!" said Yukiei, concentrating as she flipped the glowing pages of her school book. "I don't _know_ if any of this will work. There's something I feel, something… something bubbling—I think I can do anything. But I don't know anything about _this_. None of it's in my manual…"

"Don't you know what's in your manual?" inquired Keiko who was wearing a feather boa.

"No. I've only read a few chapters. What I know best is pages one to four. It covers the basics which is all I need to know about being a Mary-Sue."

"Which is?"

"There is one sentence on each of the four pages. They read as follows…"

"_Beauty enough to still the stars…_

_Love enough to light a heart…_

_Perfect enough to hold a soul… _

_And wishes enough to change the world…"_

"We're packed," said Kurama, handing a bag over to Botan. They were both wearing funny clothes.

There in the darkness of Genkai's basement they commenced their infiltration of WANGST.

---

The fact that it was a good plan didn't mean that Hiei didn't hate it. Any plan of Kuwabara's Hiei was naturally predisposed to hate with a passion. However, after the whole traumatic experience with Mary-Sues, the fire demon didn't want to have anything to do with the word 'passion.' Thus he executed the plan to the best of his ability—in which case one may want to remove any politeness included in the translations of Hiei's thoughts and write: thus the plan would be executed according to how long he could possibly prevent it.

"C'mon, man. Just hug me," said Kuwabara.

The plan was, of course, sound in theory, but a practical application may take some work.

"…"

Koenma found it neat, the way Hiei could verbalize an ellipse.

Mukuro held a crayon that was as black as night, as black as the hands of fate, and with a few mighty strokes, concealed "Logic" as "ilLogic." She looked at the border sign and vaguely wondered whether or not she should have capitalized the 'I' but then decided it probably made more sense this way. She glanced back to see how Hiei and Kuwabara were doing.

The human boy was shirtless and had his arms outstretched. Hiei was shirtless too, but reluctant. Koenma was eating popcorn.

Mukuro watched for a minute.

"Don't be such a baby," Kuwabara told Hiei, which ignited the demon's anger, but his dignity held on tighter. Kuwabara was no more excited at the proposition of hugging Hiei any more than the fire demon was. Mukuro concluded that enough had been enough and pushed Hiei at Kuwabara.

They hugged. There was panic. There was identity crisis.

Koenma shouted to the world, "Lo and behold, one of the greatest sins of Suekind is being enacted upon this place of carnal passion! Oh, noes!"

They were magic, if not slightly exaggerated, words that commanded attention. Koenma was good at reaching parties of unknown people. Mostly because this was technically _his_ world—since his father went away—and people should pay attention to those who were in charge. He was the kind of authority one found themselves paying attention to if not for entertainment value then certainly for the "Hey, watch out!" warnings.

…_And the great Sue-Networks opened up to the world, like a great eye full of nothingness, to gaze, unsure, uncertain that it was true…_

Mukuro dragged Hiei away and kissed him.

_The Sue-Networks buzzed and blinked, red-hot now, Ionina screamed, Sues were outraged, Yukiei felt the tug. Two sins, committed one after another… burning, burning. The alert went out, a raw shrieking voice through the channels. Bring your swords and lipstick, take the battle to ilLogic, capture the sinners, those heathens. March, march, march…_

Koenma blinked, nonplussed at the fact he could hear the Sue-Networks. They were brimming with rage, and the words just _overflowed_ into reality. It didn't make any sort of sense whatsoever, but that didn't matter anymore since they now resided in a pseudo-illogic.

Mukuro could hear it too and quietly wondered what the big deal over it was. There wasn't much time to wonder, however, as they needed to prepare for the next stages of their operation.

…_And the Sue-Network flowed together, molten, into one pulsating core, intent on the objects of their hate. There was nothing else but the need, the desire to eradicate those evils…_

It was amazing what intensely hated pairings could achieve.

---


	6. Throbbing Salami of Love

**WANGST**

Chapter six

And then… she returned.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho. I never have, I never will. I don't even have a witty disclaimer to go with it.

---

Gary-Marty-Stu-Sam lived in the Desert of Erotica which resided under the rule of the Underthing King. He lived in the rolling red-gold sands of the desert dotted with high plateaus and he couldn't be more miserable. Sometimes he fooled around with pretty young ladies and he was still miserable. In fact, the only adjective that was allowed to be in conjunction with Gary-Marty-Stu-Sam's actions was the word miserable.

He was chained to the side of a cliff.

This was not, in fact, why he was miserable.

He wasn't even miserable about the fact he suffered from a horrible clinical condition called _death._ He tried not to let it get to him too much. Necromancy was always a possible solution to this minor problem, and his sister creatures the Mary-Sues were always bringing people back to life. In fact, he thought his future looked pretty bright.

He was miserable, however, because the gods have given him a task and there was a sword stuck in his chest.

"Excuse me," he said. "You there. Tall fella with the foxy lady by his side."

Sensui turned to see a man who seemed to be stuck to the bottom of a cliff, owing to the fact that he was impaled and there seemed to be some type of chain contraption. The man waved him over.

"You seem like a nice, strong, masculine, heterosexual man," began Gary-Marty-Stu-Sam miserably hopeful.

"Uhm," said Sensui.

"Exactly," Gary-Marty-Stu-Sam went on. "So why don't you try pulling out this here sword. It bestows magical powers on whoever pulls it out."

"How do you know?"

Gary-Marty-Stu-Sam looked at Sensui suspiciously.

"Haven't you ever read—whatssum?—Arthurian legends? Arthur pulls the mighty sword from the stone and—"

"But how do you know?" asked Sensui, who had a nasty penchant for pointing out things other people didn't like. "You just called it a legend. How is it that definitive proof for the transference of thaumaturgical powers?"

"You have no sense of imagination, do you?" asked the Stu, miserably.

"Not really. Never had a use for it."

"Just pull it out."

Gripping the sword, Sensui began to pull.

"Does it have a name?" asked Koto.

"What?"

"You know, a name. All famous legendary swords have one."

"Yeah, it's called The Throbbing Salami of Love."

Sensui jerked it out then asked, "What?"

Gary-Marty-Stu-Sam held up his decaying hands innocently, "They were a little self-conscious back in the old golden days. Y'know." He added, "Er, d'you think you could stab me with it?"

"What for?" Koto wanted to know. "We have to get going soon anyway."

The Stu rattled his chains.

"Where are you heading? Can I come?"

Sensui and Koto distinctly avoided looking at each other and edged away.

"Ah, so you don't have anywhere particular in mind. In that case, could you _please_ stab me? More than once? When I get resurrected I'd like to look all manly. Because bleeding profusely from outrageous and unrealistic wounds makes one pretentiously manly. The same applies to carrying around bazookas and wearing togas. It's a… rite of manhood, you understand."

The taller canon character shrugged and thrust his Throbbing Salami of Love into the man. This was done several times until Sensui paused, sword poised.

"Something about this seems wrong."

"I'm only a helpless man chained to a cliff where a stranger is prodding me with his Salami of Love. Nothin' wrong with that."

"It's amazing how far an euphemism can really go," remarked Koto.

"Leaving," said Sensui, doing just that and taking the sword with.

"Hey, wait up!"

And soon there was nothing more but two pairs of footprints in the sand in the very dry, very uninteresting desert of Erotica, which were even sooner swept away by the wind of the brewing storm. The man still chained to the bottom of a giant plateau that sat in the middle of the desert watched as a fuzzy black cloud spewing small rivulets of electricity passed by.

"Interesting," noted Gary-Marty-Stu-Sam.

With a clinking sound the chains fell to his feet and, with a quick adjustment to his hair, the Stu set off after Koto and Sensui.

---

Yusuke looked around the multi-layered silvery world. They were speeding through it, like comets, passing by the gyrating, dancing lights in colors Yusuke didn't recognize.

He wanted to ask, "Where are we?" But somehow he couldn't grasp the _concept_ of "we" at the moment. When a soul and heart had been tugged at enough times, by thousands of pale, lady-like monsters, prying it further and further from itself, sometimes pieces break off and remain lost forever. Sometimes the bits never come back together, because too many people end up taking the bits with them forever. The Sues had taken all the little chipped off bits of Yusuke, all the little parts that were easy to crack, easy to break…

But now, with his soul pulled out thin, hurtling through the silvery, multifaceted world and dancing lights, Yusuke felt, well, more together. As if the little bits had returned to him somehow.

"We're in the Sue-Network, aren't we?" he asked, when he mastered his vocal chords. Yusuke had the ability to figure things out for himself.

Kurama nodded vaguely. He seemed pretty overwhelmed despite the fact that it hardly showed on his face. _He would be,_ thought Yusuke, _he had more bits taken out of him._

The Sue-Network connected everything. It connected everyone. It connected every Sue. Everything that entered the Sue-Network immediately became connected with the very Sue Ego. Everything that had been taken, everything that had been warped, everything that had been tainted, corrupted, destroyed, mangled, lost, created, or imagined, existed in the Sue-Network. They were now a part of it, and everything they'd lost, they got _back_.

"How is she doing this?" asked Keiko. She was looking at Yukiei.

Yukiei was _glowing_. She was gripping her manual so tight her knuckles were turning white, and her eyes were shut closed, and she was _glowing_.

"I don't think even Sues are supposed to be able to do this," commented Botan, looking around at the Network.

"But Sues can do everything, right?"

"I think," started Botan, "I think, it has something to do with what _they_ believe they can do."

Keiko was quiet for a moment, then remarked, "What _don't_ Sues believe they can do?"

"This, apparently."

Hurtling through the Network, faster than the speed of thought, suddenly the world opened up, as they continued to plummet onwards, swallowed by a mesh of sparks.

---

Sensui gripped the sword tightly.

"What's wrong?" asked Koto.

Sensui didn't answer but instead, paused and released his grip on the sword slightly. It swayed. He unsheathed it, but had difficulty doing so, as it began fighting his grasp. It took both Sensui and Koto to tackle it to the ground.

"What's with that thing?" Koto asked once Sensui had his sword under control. It was pointing due south.

Experimentally, he took a few steps in that direction. The sword ceased struggling. Wordlessly, Sensui headed south.

---

Yukina knelt down on the marsh bank knowing Youko Kurama's golden eyes watched her as she did so. Carefully, she reached out and took hold of the black suitcase in her slender white fingers.

"Well?" asked the demon, his tail twitched impatiently. He was irritated Yomi had switched _the goods_ into the backpack, the extraneous item Youko had not thought they needed, and not the classier case. The case had style. _The goods_ deserved to be in it and not the ratty backpack.

"It's warm," breathed the girl. Her fingers found the silver latches.

"Wait," warned the fox thief. The girl hesitated and the demon continued, "You don't know what's in there."

"I think," said Yukina, putting her ear on the case and listening intently, "I do."

Youko watched the girl run her hands over the case like she was searching for something, or listening with her fingers. His tail flicked back and forth twitching as the marsh flies landed on his skin. They were currently standing in the middle of a swamp better known as Mushy Fluff. Apparently, the lands which hung around had been made of sugar and fluff and had infected itself with enough toothaches and cavities that the water had dissolved into thick, brown syrup and the land into frothy bread pudding which stuck to travelers' shoes.

He glared at a cotton candy cattail for a moment before he turned around, ignoring Yukina and murmured quietly, "She's supposed to be here by now."

Youko Kurama had not, in fact, played Candy Land. If he had, he would not have chosen to compare the game with his current environment. The Mushy Fluff swamp was far more depressing than the original. There were bright pink and blue cotton candy cattails everywhere which purred and sang whenever you tried to push your way past them, and most times, they melted onto your limbs like infectious colorful clouds and clung to your skin saying phrases like, "I'll love you forever," and "This is True Love, you just don't know it yet." Not to mention that the ground, the bread pudding, practically fizzled with affection wherever anyone walked on it. It was impossible to stand anywhere for long before sinking deep into the burning, acidic, flesh-eating syrup of the swamp.

Youko tore a bubbly pink cotton candy cloud from his arm.

"But I love you!" it said as he squashed it with his foot.

The demon surveyed the swamp, looking for someone.

"It has a heartbeat," Yukina whispered to herself, pale, slender fingers reaching for the silver latches.

"Don't," Youko hissed, glaring over his shoulder as the small ice maiden opened the case slowly.

Yukina stared into the dark of the case and bright blue eyes stared back.

"I know what you are," she told the thing inside the box. The eyes blinked at her. "I know what you can do. You can help."

"No," said the Thing. "There are many things I can do, but the thing you'd ask me to do would turn me into one of Them. I cannot save you."

"But you're—" Yukina stared deep into the case, trying to peer past the darkness, "you're from Imagination, aren't you? You're like Them."

"I am anything anyone wants me to be," said Thing.

"So you _can_—!"

"No," said Thing. "I am whatever anyone can imagine. I can do whatever anyone dreams. I am powerful and limitless and They don't affect me. But I will not turn into one for you. Power must be given limits, and limits must be given form."

"You refuse to help then," Youko said, looking over his shoulder again at the case in the marsh grass.

"I never said that," said Thing.

"You will?" asked Yukina.

"I never said that either."

It occurred to Youko they were heading about this the wrong way.

"You know what we want. What do _you_ want?"

Lips neither canon character could see parted, "Form. Shape me the way I'm supposed to be."

It was then Kuroko's sinking boat reached the sugary shores.

---

"Nice dress," Shizuru told Yusuke. "Is that a petticoat?"

"Sh-shut up," said Yusuke blushing furiously. He pointed an accusing finger. "What's with the bondage gear?"

"Lady Shizuka?" squeaked Yukiei, knock-kneed.

"Ah," said Shizuru, one hand on her hip, leather clothing shining in the afternoon sun that filtered in from the window. "It's you."

"Lady?" inquired Kurama, trying not to eye all the black leather with too quizzical a look.

"Shizu…_ka?_" asked Botan, whose eyes couldn't seem to move from the riding crop in the woman's hand. Shizuru gave the blue-haired girl a very weary look.

"I changed the last two letters in my name and it's like I'm a completely different person to them, you know? They made me a teacher." Shizuru leaned against the dark wooden desk in the classroom. "Although I did have to give up smoking in order to keep up the disguise. They told me real flawed women didn't have any real flaws."

Botan looked around the classroom. Strange instruments hung from the walls, worrying manacles seemed to be attached to the floor, and sunlight streamed in from the wide, open window making everything sparkle. There was an analog clock that hung from the wall in front of the classroom that happily expressed the time as five fourths past twenty-six o' clock.

"That doesn't make any sense," Botan said, looking at the clock.

"That's what I told them," Shizuru continued, picking up a stack of papers from her desk. "But then they said that I was thinking too much like an Original Character. Making sense isn't sensible."

She was placing single sheets of paper on the desks and most of them seemed to be heavily marked in red. Kurama picked up one of the papers that had a large, fat F- on it.

"All these answers are correct," he said.

"Yeah, I know, but they don't."

"You're a saboteur!" Keiko gasped, suddenly.

"No she's not!" Yukiei yelled, hands bunched into fists. The purple-haired fox-eared Sue rounded on Keiko. "She's the greatest professor I've ever had. She taught me the Stance of the Nagging Flea! And the Stance of the Magic Tree! And she taught me what to do when I'm in trouble!"

"Really?" asked Yusuke, "And what's that?"

"Find a way to solve the problem!"

"Ah," said Kurama watching Shizuru continue to pass out papers, "it is sabotage then. A normal Sue wouldn't solve her own problem. Instead, she'd get us to do it for her. Or angst about it, pretending to try to solve things on her own, until we stepped in and did everything for her. Shizuru, you're brilliant."

"Damn straight," Shizuru muttered, "but I was mostly irritated at the time when I came up with it. Far too many Sues have no idea how to tie their own shoes. They just magic them on and go."

"But… but you're one of the head professors," Yukiei started. Crystalline tears might have filled her eyes at one time, but this time they were just regular tears. They didn't even roll off her cheeks and fall onto the single petal of a blooming flower. "You're one of the most prestigious… I thought that… but what about… how _could_ you—?"

"Yukiei," sighed Shizuru, placing the last paper on a damaged, bloodstained desk in the back. "Yukiei Jakou. I remember you. You were one of the worst students I ever had. Of course you'd use those silly made-up stances. That's the point."

"Y-You _are_ a saboteur," cried the Sue. "I can't believe I ever called you Lady!"

Shizuru didn't say anything for a while. She returned to the front of the room and leaned back against her desk right next to the floral-decorated iron maiden. The woman tapped a foot thoughtfully, and Yusuke realized she was wearing some awfully pointy footwear.

"What did you learn here?" the woman asked softly, in what Keiko recognized as one of Shizuru's more contemplative tones.

"Nothing of value, _apparently_," Yukiei spat.

"Look," Shizuru said sharply, picking up the riding crop and waving it in the Sue's face. "You can either sit here and whine all day about how I'm suddenly this horrible person for fooling you all and messing you up, or you can deal with it, suck it up, and tell me what you _really_ learned."

Yukiei looked at Shizuru just as sharply.

"And I'm not talking about being a Sue either," Shizuru continued. "I mean what you really learned that's really real and has nothing to do with being a Sue, getting good grades, and living in Fandom."

Yusuke tugged Keiko's feather boa.

"Hey, what's Fandom?" he whispered.

"Oh, it's a silly place," said Keiko, "Nothing important, honest."

"I learned…" began Yukiei, thinking deeply, which was hard with such a shallow mind, so she tried imagining she was thinking instead.

A Mary-Sue isn't human. That's the whole point, really. Oh, they inhabit human-shaped bodies, and there's the occasional nonhuman-shaped ones too, but they aren't really human—or at least they're not human in the same way that a human is human. Humans are rife with things like flaws, hardship, failure, and zits. In fact, it was probably a basic component of humanity to possess at least three of these four things. Humans seemed to be born to toddle around the universe never knowing where they were going and were always trying so hard to get to the next step, wherever _that_ was. Mary-Sues never had this problem.

Mary-Sues were born from dreams, sometimes wet dreams, but dreams nevertheless. They walked through the universe with legs woven from the silk of stars and peered at things through eyes crafted from glittering rainbows. Their voices were like the audio equivalent of the setting sun, shining red against the coming backdrop of the diamond encrusted night and their hair flowed and shimmered like the tail of ghosts. They reached out and embraced the world, their caress as brief as an ever-lasting blizzard, and their touch as soft and kind as frostbite.

Mary-Sues were born from dreams and _destined_ to be great at whatever they did. Humans are born, rather sloppily, and went though life wanting, and needing, and _choosing_. Humans, in general, lived. Mary-Sues… stood still.

Yukiei had been born in a field of dreams and clovers fully grown. You didn't get given a Past until later after some amount of schooling—this is why so many Sues' Pasts didn't make sense or have lasting effects. They'd never had the practice.

Yukiei watched Lady Shizuka—Lady Shizu_ru_—carefully. Now that it had been confirmed, she could see past the meticulous disguise. There was dark lipstick, and eye liner, and bondage gear, and the most dangerous-looking heels in the world, but beyond that, hidden not all that deeply, she could see the canon character. Yukiei might have wondered how she couldn't see it before, she might have asked herself how she could have missed the lack of sparkle in her hair, or the absolute lack of grace to her movement, or the _human_ sensibilities. Yukiei might have asked herself these things, but she didn't. Because she already knew.

"We don't learn, do we?" she asked, looking, for the first time, very self-consciously at her clothing. "I can cook perfectly, I can do complicated math algorithms, I can sing in tandem with myself. I can revolutionize the entire computer science field with a floppy disk, I can create a full-color oil painting with just three colors using only dots. I'm adept at using the Spirit Gun, the Rose Whip, and the Dragon of the Darkness Flame, and I have my own versions. Under patronizing conditions I can even turn Kuwabara into a fool using his own Spirit Sword. I know more than fifty forms of martial arts and _marital_ arts and I can change my hair color at will. I never have to watch my weight, I never break out, I never embarrass myself. And… I never live, I never learn."

The Sue-in-Training could see Shizuru looking at her through the blur of tears. There was a frown on her face. Yukiei dashed the tears away with an angry hand.

"What about now?" the brown-haired woman asked. Yukiei nearly flinched. There was steel in Shizuru's voice.

Yukiei looked around at the classroom at familiar desks, windows, and torture devices. She ran a hand over the back of a chair, her fingers prickling at the touch, and looked at Yusuke in the loli dress and Keiko with the feather boa. They stood close to each other, Yusuke's hand on Keiko's shoulder, watching her. Botan wore her fedora like a tiara and Kurama with his hair gelled into spikes stood awkwardly with his arms folded over his chest in the corner. They'd gone through such _lengths_ to get here, she saw. It wasn't a matter of looking right or doing something jaw-droppingly dazzling—in fact they all looked _wrong_, and terrible, (what was with Kurama's fishnet shirt, and those stockings did _not_ suit Yusuke) and maybe that was the point. They would never know _for certain_ that what they were doing was absolutely right, that everything was guaranteed. But they went through it anyway.

The Sue's lip quivered.

Which is why they learned and she never did.

"I can help you," she said. "I want to."

"No offense, lady, but we've seen your kind of help," Yusuke told her.

"…I can help you help yourselves. What do you need?"

Yukiei gave a weak smile.

There was a moment of tentative silence and then…

"Okay," said Shizuru. Yukiei let out a sigh of relief. It wouldn't be until later she realized she'd been holding her breath in anticipation. She wasn't used to anticipation, it spoke too much of being uncertain, of being human.

"I've got a plan," Shizuru continued. She walked around to her desk, her shoes going _clip-clop_ on the wooden flooring, and bent over to rummage in her desk. Everyone looked away. "Where is it—?"

That was when Yukiei collapsed, white-eyed, to her knees, and the Sue-Network boiled with rage.

---

Author's Note: This is an odd chapter if only because it's not as funny as the other ones, but I also think it's because it's kind of an in-between chapter where everything is building up.

I want to thank everyone who sent me messages over the years I haven't updated and kept my mind on this fic. I always intended to update, but life always got in the way. So this chapter, innuendoes and all, is dedicated to every one of you dogged determined individuals who just want a goddamn finished story. Thank you. Truly.

-KowaretaTsubasa


End file.
